For the first episode of the Arab Media & Society Podcast, Managing Editor Sarah El-Shaarawi speaks with Hafez Al Mirazi, a veteran of Arab and international broadcasting and Director of the Adham Center for Television and Digital Journalism at the American University in Cairo about why reforming Egyptian national broadcasting is essential to its survival.

Al-Nahar TV Network announced Friday the suspension of Sabaya al-Kheir TV program hosted by controversial anchorwoman Riham Saeed, who resigned amid public outrage against her for airing personal photos of a guest on her show without her permission. Last Tuesday, Saeed hosted Somaya Tarek, who claims to have been harassed by a man in a Heliopolis mall. On her show, Saeed appeared to defend the man and blame the woman, implying that Tarek "had brought it on herself." (Aswat Masriya)

In April 2014, Egypt’s then foreign minister Nabil Fahmy used a marriage simile to describe the country’s relationship with the United States. At home, the expression didn’t translate. Muhammad Y Gamal discusses the challenges associated with media translation, and makes a case for the development of a coherent media translation policy in Egypt.

In the spring of 2002 Al Qaeda selected Yosri Fouda, Al Jazeera’s then London Bureau Chief, to interview two of the most wanted leaders within the organization, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Bin Al-Shiba. This represented the first public admission that Al Qaeda was in fact responsible for the attacks …

Managing Editor Sarah El-Shaarawi conducts an in depth review of BBC Media Action's policy breif After the Arab Uprisings: The prospects for a media that serves the public, examining the viability of their proposed recommendations for reforming Arab national broadcasters.

It was recently announced that Arab “media experts” are planning to “celebrate” Arab Media Day on April 21, 2016. The theme for the first day of what is meant to become an annual tradition is “The role of the [Arab] media in combating terrorism”.  The mockery is surely multi-faceted. One …

“I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” This was Thomas Jefferson’s decisive answer when asked to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government.” Throughout the past four centuries, the universal avowal of democracy and the rule of law have dramatically evolved. As a …

Using framing theory and content analysis, Saeed Abdullah & Mokhtar Elareshi investigate how Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya TV networks cover terrorism. This paper focuses on how the two networks differ or are similar in covering terrorism and identifies factors that may influence each network’s news selection processes and the framing of terrorism stories. This work represents an initial effort to expand research on terrorism coverage by pan-Arab media.

The School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo hosted a two-day conference on Media Policies and Freedom of Expression from February 25-26, 2015. The goal of the proceedings was to help strengthen legal and regulatory frameworks, especially in regard to freedom of expression in Egypt. Hussein Amin and Sarah El-Shaarawi revisit some of the notable discussion from the conference.

In Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography, Ariella Azoulay interrogates issues of visual culture, in particular photography, the role of spectator-critics, body politics, and citizenship, through the lens of the Palestinian struggle. She argues that the boundaries of the aesthetic, the political, and the civil perpetuate power relations of nation-states and exclusions. Kiranjeet Kaur Dhillon reviews.